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Decomposing Slavic aspect: the role of aspectual morphology in Polish and other Slavic languages

DECOMPOSING SLAVIC ASPECT:
THE ROLE OF ASPECTUAL MORPHOLOGY IN POLISH
AND OTHER SLAVIC LANGUAGES
by
Agnieszka Agata Łazorczyk
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(LINGUISTICS)
August 2010

This dissertation considers the problem of the semantic function of verbal aspectual morphology in Polish and other Slavic languages in the framework of generative syntax and semantics. Three kinds of such morphology are examined: (i) prefixes attaching directly to the root, (ii) secondary imperfective suffixes, and (iii) three prefixes that have a quantificational function and are able to stack on top of already prefixed verbs: na- ‘a lot,’ po- ‘some, a little’ and the distributive po-. Assuming a two-tiered theory of aspect (Smith 1991), where two distinct types of grammatically encoded aspect are distinguished – Aktionsart (telicity, durativity, dynamicity) and viewpoint (PERFECTIVITY vs. IMPERFECTIVITY) – the aspectual contribution of the above listed markers is analyzed using various syntactic and semantic tests, leading to a number of new conclusions and novel accounts of various problems. It is determined that Slavic verbal prefixes are uniformly markers of telicity, and then proposed that they project as heads of the telicity-encoding projection InnerAsp. Prefixed forms are also viewpoint-PERFECTIVE (= temporally bound), but for a number of reasons this fact is attributed to a compositional restriction whereby telic predicates compose only with the PERFECTIVE viewpoint, rather than to the prefixes fulfilling that role. With regard to secondary imperfective suffixation, careful examination of data from Old Church Slavonic, Bulgarian and Polish reveals, contrary to what is commonly assumed, that secondary imperfective forms need not be interpreted IMPERFECTIVELY. Their interpretation is, on the other hand, always atelic. This leads to the novel proposal that the secondary imperfective morphemes correspond to a partitive-homogenizing operator, which applies to telic predicates and returns atelic ones. It is further proposed that this operator heads the InnerAspSI projection, merging right above InnerAsp.; Lastly, with regard to quantificational prefixes, they are subjected to a two-part analysis, with the first one focusing on their unique properties, i.e., their role as intensifiers and variable quantifiers as well as their stacking ability, and the second one addressing their aspectual role. Aspectually, quantificational prefixes are shown to behave largely like other, “regular” prefixes, with only po- ‘some, a little’ outside of degree achievement predicates being Aktionsart neutral. This observation puts into question a number of previous analyses which claim that such quantificational prefixes do not participate in telicity-marking. Their newly reported Aktionsart role necessitates a recursive telicity-encoding structure for all cases where a quantificational prefix attaches to a secondary imperfective form. This is proposed to be accomplished through an additional telicity-encoding projection InnerAspQ, which merges with InnerAspSI.

DECOMPOSING SLAVIC ASPECT:
THE ROLE OF ASPECTUAL MORPHOLOGY IN POLISH
AND OTHER SLAVIC LANGUAGES
by
Agnieszka Agata Łazorczyk
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(LINGUISTICS)
August 2010